SpaceX Working on Orbital Refueling Test Between Two Starships

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What’s better than one Starship? You guessed it: two of them.

In 2026, we may get to see a pair of the world’s largest spacecraft work in tandem in a spectacular attempt to refuel one of them in orbit. This test will serve as a crucial milestone toward demonstrating that Starship is capable of carrying out NASA’s Artemis III mission, which will return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over fifty years.

Spotted by TechCrunch, the timeline for the anticipated test was revealed in a Spaceflight Now interview with Kent Chojnacki, deputy manager for NASA’s Human Landing System program.

According to Chojnacki, the watershed test, which will span several weeks, is scheduled to begin in March 2026 and wrap up that summer—although there have been no official announcements on this from either NASA or SpaceX.

Longshot, Chaser

The refueling plan is ambitious. First, SpaceX will launch two Starships to low Earth orbit three to four weeks apart.

Parked above our planet, the initial spacecraft will need to be gassed up for the demonstration’s purposes and will patiently wait in orbit.

Weeks later, the second “chaser” rocket will fly up for a rendezvous with its companion. The two Starships will then dock, after which the latecomer will transfer propellant to the first rocket. Once refueling is complete, the vehicles will undock and both will deorbit.

This would mark the first time that ship-to-ship propellant transfer is demonstrated at this scale, according to Chojnacki.

“And once you’ve done that, you’ve really cracked open the opportunity to move massive amounts of payload and cargo outside of the Earth’s sphere,” he said in the interview. “If you can have a Starship with propellant aggregation, that’s going to be the next step to doing an uncrewed demonstration.”

Relight the Way

In the long term, a variant of Starship called the Human Landing System is expected to serve as the lunar lander that will bring NASA astronauts to the surface of the Moon.

SpaceX’s recent progress with the rocket has been promising. Its most recent fifth orbital flight test saw Starship achieve a spectacular landing by guiding itself into the mechanical arms of its launch tower, dubbed “Mechazilla,” which caught the rocket midair.

That success proved Starship is well on its way to becoming the reusable launch platform SpaceX promised. Next, the company plans to demonstrate that the vehicle’s upper stage can relight one of its rocket engines in space—an essential capability for performing controlled reentries into Earth’s atmosphere.

According to SpaceX, that demonstration could come as soon as November 18. Keep your eyes peeled.

Also read: 66 Best Growth Hacking Tools You Need to Test!

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